Sunday, February 21, 2010

It's 42 degrees out this weekend and Basil has been able to enjoy some time outdoors. He even ran through the snow to get to the warm sun in the back of the yard. We can both smell spring coming (keeping fingers crossed). I started sowing my seeds indoors and Basil wanted in on the action. He kept sniffing everything like the micro manager that he is. I am looking forward to seeing how Basil will react to my garden and vegetables. In addition, Basil seems to have gotten used to the "noises" in the house with us working on the dining room and now the half bathroom.

Sunday, February 14, 2010

It happened quite gradually, so it didn't even occur to me to post about it. Basil has been itch free for weeks. When he first came to us, we were feeding him Merrick and he was still scratching his body and chin with his back paw. Poor wittle guy. We switched to Blue Buffalo and the scratching ceased but every morning he would rub his chin against the carpet and knawed at his paws. We also think the chicken treats was causing the bit of itching. We switched to duck or lamb treats. We also switched to Blue Buffalo's fish and sweet potato dry food for breakfast and give him salmon or mackerel at night. We also give him pears, cheese and carrots quite often. Something must be working because he has been completely itch and hot spot free!

Basil has been with us 4 months now. He is completely comfortable with us and has been taking many liberties like jumping onto the couch and begging for food. We have had to reel some of that behavior back in. Some of the newer things he learned is telling him the "heat is on" and he will go running to the vent. He's not barking at people from the car anymore. He does slip every once in a while when he's with Keith, but I'll just put him back in check. As Cesar Milan instructed. Anticipate the behavior before it occurs and keep on it. His new thing is barking at people who approach the front door, so I'm working on that now.

We introduced carrots, salmon and mackerel. He doesn't seem to like the raw food we got him. He gobbled it up and threw up. I left it frozen and cut the food into cubes. He ate it more slowly this time but he still didn't enjoy it.

He has acclimated to the snow and cold weather. He doesn't love the snow the way his neighbor dog friends like the snow, but he'll at least go in it now. During our blizzard, he jumped across some snow that wasn't shoveled and "fell in". He was startled by that so he's hesistant to go out into the snow unless we shovel the side walk. After a while, I got tired of shoveling, but he still needed to go out of course. The solution? I would put a big foot print into the snow in order to show him the depth of the snow. He would walk into my foot print and then go potty.

I found him sitting on our bed one day just staring out the window. There aren't many places where he can comfortably look out the window and we want him to be able to do that. So I pushed an ottoman up to a window for him. Also, he sits in a cushy rocking chair while Keith works from home. That's *his* spot. He will stare out the window from the chair too, but most of the time he sleeps.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

At night, I lay this way with Basil a lot. I put him on his back and rub his belly like I'm holding a wittle baby. He's so sweet and he loves getting this belly rubbed. The only thing I wonder is since he's technically an adolescent now is if he just finds that we're suffocating him? Does he need his space?

For the last couple of days, Basil has been very playful. I wonder if it's because I'm home due to the snow storm or because there's just been a lot of activity with people coming in and out working on our bathroom. He is always playful, but today he's especially playful running in circles and doing jumps in the air. He's also really exercising his freedom - testing his boundaries, going for my personal items, flying onto the bed from the love seat, flying off the bed, mouthing things he normally doesn't. We have to reel him back a little just to make sure he doesn't do anything that could hurt himself. He knows the house is our place and the yard is our place. But ever since he found out there was food over at Carmel's house, he's been taking the liberty of walking over there if we try to go for a walk and just hang out on their porch. When he is in Carmel's house, Keith and I are no longer pack leaders and he doesn't listen to us. He's just tracking their home and becomes alpha over Carmel (surprising for a big dog!).

Another thing we want to do is make him an area where he can go sit and lay in front of the window, so he can people watch. I found him sitting on our bed, ears all perched up looking out the window. There wasn't anyone outside, but he was just watching. Dogs like to do that. It's better than sleeping on the couch and staring at the floor.

I guess I made the mistake of teaching this to Basil. I had an old sheet that I was getting ready to throw out the other night. I threw it over Basil and we started wrestling with it. I took video which I'll post soon. Well, we threw down these table cloths to protect the floor while we had our bathroom done this week. We look over and Basil is dragging this cloth away and playing with it as we were playing the other day with the old sheet.

Saturday, February 6, 2010

Look at our little doodle bug! He jumped into 20-24" of snow and all you could see were his eyeballs!

I'm pretty sure he misses Florida right about now.

I think I can I think I can...

While he played in the snow, I spent the day sewing including mending up his toys. We don't leave him unsupervised with stuffed toys such as this in case he swallows them as Tego once did and needed surgery to remove it. But he does like them a lot so we'll let him play with one briefly and then take it away when we're done.

Poor gingerbread man had to go through a major surgery to put his arm back on.